Sunday, October 16, 2011

We continue with the rest of the compositions with which I participated in various composition tourneys in Jesi, Italy, during the World Chess Compositions Congress.
When a composition has a defect or it happens that the judge dislikes it or it is weaker than the compositions of other composers, then it does not take a distinction. We do our best to create a very nice position but, as it happens in life, this is not always possible. Some of the compositions, when we examine them later without pressure (and with more experience), can be improved. This is something that the experienced judges see or feel, and that is why their opinion is useful.
In a previous post we saw five compositions, let us see now and the rest of them.

11th Japanese Sake / 3rd Brazilian Cachaça Tourney

In a Series self(stale)mate of n moves, the White alone makes n-1 moves without checking and in the last move the immobility of Black is raised and the Black achieves the goal (mate or stalemate).
We know that a white pawn starts from the second line and is promoted in the eighth line (for black : seventh and first, respectively). With the condition of Reversible Promotion, a white promoted piece stepping on the second line (for black : seventh) becomes pawn again.

The Japanese Judge Tadashi Wakashima commented : "Very nice presentation in two solutions of three promotions and two reversals (wB in the first solution and wS in the second one).".
The price was accompanied by a bottle of Japanese Sake.

The Japanese Judge Tadashi Wakashima commented : "Allumwandlung with two pawns".
The price was accompanied by a bottle of Brazilian Cachaça.

I worked several days to make this problem. The computer software were not of real help because the moves were too many and the time needed was too much (about 45 hours). At the end the very fast solver Kostas Prentos helped me with the validity checking, and I thank him.

The plan of White, to check with the Queen at d3 forcing bBb5 to capture it giving mate, has some obstacles. First there is no Queen, second many black pieces (Qa7, Bb6, Sb2, c4, Rd2, Re7) can intervene to a threat of mate from d3, and furthermore bK has a flight f4. And the bBb5 cannot guard d3 because bPc4 stands in the way.
The pawn bPg6 is needed for column change of wPh2 going to be promoted at g8, but if it was positioned at g5, a second unwanted solution appears with 1.h8=S.
The key should not be promotion to Queen because the second move 2.Qxc3 would check the bK.
Similarly for the move 8.a8=R, if we had a promotion to Queen it would check the bK. And then only the path Ra8-d8-xd2=P is valid, not via a2!
The Queen will be needed at the end and also a piece to guard f4. If the pawn wPh2 should be freed, we observe that bPh3 can be captured only by a Knight without giving check to bK!

In the fourteenth move the Knight cannot capture the rook (14.dxe7?) and also solve the problem in 27 moves. So bypasses it and postpones the closing of the line of bR (and also guarding f4 from there) for later. How much later?
Before e6 is occupied, the Queen must pass over it, 25.Qg8xc4, and only then 26.Sf4-e6.
Finally in this composition we have the four promotions (=allumwandlung), Bishop, Rook, Knight, Queen.

The Japanese Judge Tadashi Wakashima commented : "Three promotions and three reversals by a single pawn".
Here I have gathered the maximum number of obstacles (without promoted black force) to the White plan.

The Dedication is because the Judge Andrey Selivanov found that the initial position I submitted {7b/8/3S1k1P/2P3RP/Q7/pp2p3/p4p2/Kb3r2 w} had a flaw (unprovided check 1...Kxf5+ in the set play). The version here is corrected.

I hope that I have given you an idea of the creativity frenzy that exists during the world chess composition congress. Think about several other composing tourneys I did not participated and the important fact that there were many composers there better than me.

The Judge Diyan Konstadinov wrote [Six different solutions, but with Not homogeneous play].

METAXA Tourney Jesi (Italy) 2011 in memoriam Albert H. KNIEST

The Greek Judge Pavlos Moutecidis (who has started the custom with local wines to accompany the prizes) asked the following.
Theme : Selfmate Maximummer with set play. No limit on the number of moves. The total number of pieces should not exceed 10. Other fairy conditions or pieces are not allowed.

It is a Miniature, it has switchbacks of pieces, underpromotion, Pelle movement (done by a pinned piece).
It contains the theme white Chernous ("A white piece A theatens the black King. A black piece is self-pinned to stop the threat. Then the White unpins B, the piece A self-blocks the white King and the black B delivers mate"). (The theme Chernous has reversed colours).
No distinction.

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

In Jesi, Italy, was organised this August the 54th World Congress on Chess Composition (WCCC) together with the 35th
World Chess Solving Championship (WCSC), (see here the web page of the organisers and here the web page of the World Federation on Chess Composition (WFCC)).

In these web pages you can find the official Bulletin, where one can see the final results of the Solving and Composing contests. For the composition contests we have already posted a first part (here) and for the solving contests we have the following :

(D) Presentation of the games and solution of problems by John Nunn

This year's second Champion presented details and photographs from the Solving contests and described the method of solving some problems in two articles in the web page ChessBase.com. He writes elegantly and his observations are very penetrating.
Read the Presentation and the Solutions.

Monday, June 06, 2011

The friends of the OTB chess (Over The Board chess) believe that the studies (or etudes), that is chess problems composed to look like end-games, are worthy of their attention since the studies contain useful ideas.

I give below a link to a site presenting a wealth of studies, organised by composer, and of other interesting curiosities of chess composition.

Wednesday, June 01, 2011

An honourable award was given today to Nikos Dampassis (he is 91 years old) for his devotion to chess.

He was a graduate of the Military School of Evelpidon and he was a supporter of chess during the difficult years of WW2.

He gave to us details about his friend Vassilios Lyris and an old photo of them. You may see there the editors of the chess magazine "To Skaki" (owner : Zorbas), which was circulating during (Italian-German) occupation and was discontinued after liberation.

I hope that more biographical data will be published soon.

Below you see two frontpages of the magazine "Skakistis" (January 1972 and May 1972) presenting two of Nikos Dampassis' compositions (4# and 3#)

Saturday, May 28, 2011

We give links to an internet solving contest which has recently been organized from Zagreb, Croatia.

You may see the problems here. Three two-movers, two three-movers and a two-mover-puzzle. The first four are manageable. The problem E needs a little retroanalysis. The problem F asks for the positioning of the black King so, as to become a two-mover.

If you want to see the solutions, you will find them here, together with the names of the composers.

On the solvers list we find mr Themis Argirakopoulos on the second place and mr Emmanuel Manolas (who did not see at once that problem E was a retro) on the fourth place. There are solvers from at least 8 countries and the first 5 have solved all the problems.

Monday, May 02, 2011

About a year ago (2010-02-19, see here) I had posted one study of mine with the Phoenix theme, dedicated to composer Libiurkin who had presented a relevant study in 1938.
After one month the friend composer and judge in many solving contests Ioannis Garoufalidis pointed out that my study was anticipated, that is a similar study had already been published in 1943 in a magazine from Finland.

Mr I. Garoufalidis found this year and send to us for presentation a selfmate problem featuring the same theme.
In a selfmate White plays first and forces Black to mate.
The Phoenix theme is : [A pawn is promoted to a piece which was previously captured].
The specific problem is composed by Olaf Jenkner and Steven Dowd, and presents the theme three times.

Saturday, April 23, 2011

Presented a little bit delayed (but they do not change, of course). For the period 07/February/2010 thru 06/February/2011 the tool Google Analytics has collected a multitude of elements, from which I present here some :

Visitors : 5962

Absolutely unique visitors : 3586

Visitors : Started about 8 per day, increased very slightly but constantly, ended about 16 per day. Only two days had over 50 visitors.

Coming From where : 28% from sites with links to this blog, 58% from search machines, 14% from direct visits.

Countries of visitors : 835 from United States, 690 from Greece, 388 from Bulgaria, 336 from Philippines, 326 from Spain, 257 from Poland, 250 from United Kindom, 191 from France, 190 from Germany, 173 from Serbia, 145 from India, 143 from Brazil, 116 from Nederlands, 110 from Canada, 107 from Indonesia, 105 from Israel, 104 from Italy, 103 from Romania, 87 from Australia, 84 from Slovakia, 81 from Russia, and follow about ninety countries.

Most popular posts : Composers and their problems, Multiple pawn promotions, Dedication for Manolas-60, Terminology for Problemists.

Friday, April 22, 2011

A book by Werner Keym has been recently published titled [Eigenartige Schachprobleme], (in german, editions Nightrider Unlimited, 2010), which includes many of his problems (and of many other composers) with excellent comments.
The automatic translation of the title to english gives [Strange chess problems], but I would prefered [Chess problems of special art]. Really, I have found them very interesting.

From this book we will present the five-hundredth problem which contains a musicological interest, as the composer says.
It is an easy two-mover. It could also be positioned mirrored or upside-down, but the composer says that only this position is musicologically correct.

Can you explain why is he saying that?

(From this contest is excluded the Attica champion Nikos Mendrinos, who has recently received this book as a prize).

Answer :
We write down the pieces of the problem : White Kb1, Ra6, Rc8. Black Kh5.
We note the squares of the pieces [b1 a6 c8 h5], and we write separately the letters of the files from the numbers of the rows [bach 1685] and we see the surname of the music composer Johann Sebastian Bach and the year of his birth.
If we somehow change the position on the chessboard, we do not take this piece of information.

Sunday, March 27, 2011

The International Chess Federation (FIDE), within the framework of its "Chess Composition" special project, is organising the 2nd FIDE World Cup in Composing for 2011 in eight sections. The tournament is coordinated with the WFCC Presidium and is a part of the joint efforts by FIDE and WFCC for the popularization and development of chess composition worldwide.

In each section, only one composition by each author is acceptable and joint compositions are not allowed.

The theme is free in all sections, and any number of moves is acceptable in the h# and s# sections. In the fairies section, only computer-tested problems by one of the Alybadix, Popeye or WinChloe programs are allowed; the participants should state with which software they tested their composition.

The Director of the tournament is IGM Petko A. Petkov (FIDE international judge), who will not participate as author or judge in the tournament.

Entries must be sent by e-mail only to the Director's address at

ppetkow@mail.orbitel.bg

Participants should mention their postal address in the e-mail.

The closing date is May 1st, 2011.

The Director will send all compositions to the judges on standardised anonymous diagrams by May 15th, 2011. All judges should prepare their awards by July 15th, 2011.

The results will be published on the Internet by August 1st, 2011 and they will be declared final after two months allowed for claims of anticipation and unsoundness.

In each section, cups, prizes, honourable mentions and commendations will be awarded, as well as certificates for the prizes signed by the President of the FIDE Mr Kirsan Ilyumzhinov.

All participants will receive a copy of the booklet with the final awards.

Saturday, March 19, 2011

Besides the chess compositions (the chess problems), there are many chess puzzles, that use chessboards and chessmen, but their subject is basically mathematic.
The chessmen have various abilities, thus we can "play" with various positionings or moves of the pieces.

Let us see some puzzles, easy enough.
I expect solutions like [Puzzle_x, solution / solutions].
On the internet the solutions surely exist. You do not need to search there.
What I ask from you is to face the challenge by yourself and discover one solution. If you like, find how many distinct (not by turning the chessboard, not mirror positions) solutions exist for this puzzle.

P001 : How many, at most, white rooks can we place on a chessboard 8x8, to guard all squares except the occupied ones?

P002 : How many, at most, white queens can we place on a chessboard 8x8, to guard all squares except the occupied ones?

P003 : How many, at most, white knights can we place on a chessboard 8x8, to guard all squares except the occupied ones?

P004 : On a chessboard we see many squares, of various sizes (1x1, 2x2, 3x3, ..., 8x8), with sides parralel with the sides of the chessboard. How many are they?

Answers

Puzzle_001 : How many, at most, white rooks can we place on a chessboard 8x8, to guard all squares except the occupied ones?

P001

P001a

We can place, easily, 8 rooks. The obvious solution is to place them on one main diagonal (See P001). We could also place them differently, having each rook guard a line and a file (See P001a).
If we accept that the firs rook can be placed on one square of the first file, then the second rook can occupy one of seven squares in the second file, etc, until the eighth rook can be placed on one free square of the eighth file. Totally there are 8*7*6*5*4*3*2*1 positions, (in mathematics this product is named [8 factorial] and is denoted by [8!]), so we have 8!=40320 positions.
The Greek friend Carlo DeGrandi informs us that the problem was described first by the English mathematician Ernest Dudeney (1857-1930), who has also invented the crossing of words into crosswords.

Puzzle_002 : How many, at most, white queens can we place on a chessboard 8x8, to guard all squares except the occupied ones?

P002

We can place, with a little difficulty, 8 queens. The king of the puzzles, (there is a book "The Puzzle King" with his chess puzzles, by Sid Pickard), the American Sam Loyd has published in the American Chess Journal in February 1877 the position you see in P002, (stretching the fact that whichever the solution, with rotation or mirroring we will have a queen on d1).
This is an old problem, (a comment by Kevin notes that it was first proposed by Max Bezzel, in Die Schachzeitung, 1848), it was published in 1848 in the German chess magazine "Illustrierte Scachzeitung" (=Illustrated Chess newspaper) as follow-up on a question by the philologist professor Dr. A. Nauck, who also proposed to Karl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855) this problem. Nauck has published in 1850 a solution (mirror image of the solution by Loyd) while the mathematician Gauss has found 12 basic solutions. (See here).
This type of problem is very popular to the students of informatics.

Puzzle_003 : How many, at most, white knights can we place on a chessboard 8x8, to guard all squares except the occupied ones?

P003a

P003b

P003c

The answer is very easy : 32. We place 32 knights on the white squares of the chessboard and they all "threat" the black squares. Alternatively, we could place them all on black squares. Thus, we have two solutions.

With a modified formulation Puzzle_3a : "How many, at least, white knights can we place on a chessboard 8x8, to guard all squares except the occupied ones?", we see an easy answer (figure P003a) which uses 24 knights, an one more economic with 16 knights (figure P003b).

Modifying again the formulation Puzzle_3b : "How many, at least, white knights can we place on a chessboard 8x8, to guard all non-occupied squares?", (meaning that some occupied squares could be guarded), we find that the best solution (figure P003c) uses only 12 knights!

Puzzle_004 : On a chessboard we see many squares, of various sizes (1x1, 2x2, 3x3, ..., 8x8), with sides parralel with the sides of the chessboard. How many are they?

P004

On figure P004 we see numbers inside the squares of the chessboard. This number is the multitude of various-sized squares formed with this square as the upper-left-corner. Adding these multitudes (as shown in the margin) we have total = 1x8 + (2x7+1x7) + (3x6+2x6) + (4x5+3x5) + (5x4+4x4) + (6x3+5x3) + (7x2+6x2) + (8x1+7x1) = 8 + 21 + 30 + 35 + 36 + 33 + 26 + 15 = 204 squares.

Tuesday, February 08, 2011

We wish to mr. Harry Fougiaxis, president of WFCC, long living and prosperity, since in two days he will have his name-day.

Harry Fougiaxis has walked a long creative path in the area of chess composition. Today we present an old composition of his, published in 1988. It is included in the leaflet [Selected Chess Compositions by Greek Composers] which was issued by the Greek Chess Composition Committee, during the 47th World Congress of Chess Composition in Halkidiki, Greece, 4-11 September 2004.

Friday, January 21, 2011

Today we will see the study, which was chosen as Best for the year 1988 by the Studies Subcommittee of the PCCC (Permanent Commission of Fide for Chess Composition), which has evolved in 2010 to WFCC (World Federation for Chess Composition).

[Study of the Year 1988] is a study by Maksimovskikh A. and Dolgov V., in which White has the opportunity to lead Black into a certain position, leaving en prise his pieces.

(The game will be oriented to the promotion of the pawn or to the possible avoidance of the promotion. So we start with ...)Key : 1.f7+! (and if 1...Rd8 then 2.Be6 and the the conversation is very short. That brings ...)
1...Rf6
2.Be6 (from where it keeps the pawn in the game and, threatening promotion, protects itself. The big problem of Black is the promotion - not the white bishop, thus he will try to push it away from defending the pawn, at any cost ...)
2...Bf5 (Without the danger to be tangled in aimless moves and transformations of the position, the White answers ...)
3.Rd8+ (If now 3...Kc5 4.Rd5+ and the superiority of white powers will simplify the situation, i.e. 4...Kc4 5.Rxf5+ Rxe6 6.f8=Q . If 3...Ke5 then 4.Bc4 Be4 5.f8=Q Rxf8 6.Rxf8 Kd4 7.Rf4 and White wins. Just a little better is the defense ...)
3...Kc3 (but white has got the squares (a2 or d5) to move his bishop, with the idea to promote the pawn to queen, exchange this queen with the black rook and, at the same time, to be able to capture with his rook the black bishop avoiding the [K+R vs K+B] ending, which is stalemate, with the exception of the black king being in the wrong corner. Let us continue with ...).
4.Bd5 Be4 (with the same pressing on the white bishop, aiming to the capture of the pawn. Then ...)
5.Rc8+ Kb2 (5...Kd4 is no better, since we can easily bring the same picture with the promotion f8=Q, i.e. 6.Bb3 Bd3 7.f8=Q . White continues with check ...)
6.Rb8+ (and if the king returns towards the center with 6...Kc3 then 7.Be6 Bf5 8.Ba2 and the chase with the bishops can not be continued, and we have the usual threats of the White. To the corner, then, with ...)
6...Ka1
7.Rb6 (What can Black capture now and not be disappointed? 7...Rxb6 8.f8=Q with easy win for the White, or 7...Rxf7 8.Bxf7 similarly, or 7...Rf5 8.Bb3 Rf3 9.Bc4 Rf5 10.Rd6 and brings forward the promotion threat. If he tries ...)
7...Rf1 (then follow the moves ...)
8.Bc4 Bd3
9.Rb1+ (and the position is ruined for Black. For example ...)
9...Kxb1
10.Bxd3+ +- (White wins)

The World Chess Composition Tournament is a long-established team event enabling composers from all over the world to compete at international level with new chess problems and studies on set themes. Eight such tournaments have been held to date, with enthusiastic worldwide participation. The 9th WCCT is now announced, and I have pleasure in inviting all countries affiliated to FIDE to register for this competition and take part in an event which promises to be even more popular and successful than its predecessors.

Monday, January 10, 2011

The next International Solving Contest will take place on Sunday January 23rd 2011. The event is happening simultaneously in all participating countries.

There will be two sections: one for the experienced solvers. In this section solvers can obtain rating points.
The second section is intended for weaker, inexperienced solvers and for youth.

The delegates have to appoint a local controller who can be trusted on the responsible task of organizing this contest in your country. If you find it appropriate this contest may be organized in more than one location in your country. But for each location a local controller must take the responsibility. It is absolutely required that the local controller must dispose of an e-mail address. The delegate will thus indicate this e-mail-address.

The contest will consist of two rounds with six problems each, i.e. for each round a 2#, 3#, n#, EG, h# and s#.
For each round, the solving time is two hours.
To prevent possible irregularities it is essential that the start of the contest must be at the same time in each country. This means CET (Central European Time) at 11 hr. Local time must meet this CET. Between the two rounds a break is foreseen of minimum 0,5 hr and max 1,5 hr, at the option of the local controller.

Exercises of the day

Every day the website www.shredderchess.com offers to the readers of the blogs three easy chess exercises. They are given in three levels of difficulty, (L1, L2, and L3), and you may give the solution by moving the pieces with the mouse pointer. Below the diagram is then shown if the answer is correct or not.

If you miss OTB play...

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